Cuban naturalization certificates, 1904-1939
This collection names the people who became Cuban citizens through a carta de naturalización, the certificate the Republic of Cuba granted to foreigners, as the government published them between 1904 and 1939. Every entry in the surviving lists can be searched by name, and each record links to the printed page it comes from.
Where the lists come from
The Cuban government printed these lists in the Boletín Oficial de la Secretaría de Estado, the official bulletin of Cuba's department of foreign affairs, which handled citizenship. The bulletin later carried the name of the Ministerio de Estado. Each issue included the certificates granted in a recent month under headings such as "Cartas de naturalización cubana expedidas en el mes de marzo de 1929". A list could appear an issue or two after the month it covers: the certificates of April 1930, for example, were printed in the May 1930 issue. The file for 1929 opens with the certificates of December 1928.
The scans come from library copies of the bulletin. The 1937 pages carry the same Wisconsin Historical Society library stamps as the copy digitized by the University of Florida Digital Collections, which holds a long run of the bulletin. The volumes for 1908, 1914 and 1918 are Google Books scans of copies held by the University of California and Stanford University.
What an entry tells you
From 1904 to 1930 each entry is a short sentence: the person's name, where they were born, their age, and often their marital status and the first names of their father and mother, for example "Juan Lana y Rodríguez, natural de Asturias, España, de 41 años, hijo de Angel y de Manuela." From 1937 the lists are much more compact: surname, given name and country of origin, and in parts of the 1939 list the name alone. A few 1939 entries give the number of the person's file (expediente) instead of a country.
The birthplace is recorded as the list prints it, from a village and province to a country alone, using the place names of the time (Oviedo for Asturias, Checoeslovaquia, Monte Líbano). Where the printer made an obvious error, the printed form is kept.
Who could become Cuban
The Constitution of 1901 recognized several kinds of naturalized Cubans. Veterans of the Liberation Army qualified, and so did Spaniards living in Cuba on 11 April 1899 who did not register to keep their Spanish nationality by 11 April 1900. Those Spaniards became Cuban without applying for a carta. Everyone else followed the ordinary route: at least five years of residence in Cuba, and at least two years after declaring the intention to become Cuban. The constitutional laws of 1934 and 1935 shortened that wait to one year.
Under the law of 30 October 1902, the declaration of intention and the final grant of citizenship were both entered in the local Registro Civil, and the Secretaría de Estado issued the carta. Spaniards still made up most of the people naturalized through cartas: one study of the bulletin counted 6,835 Spaniards among 8,049 people in its sample, 85 percent.
Why the lists grow in the late 1930s
A decree of 8 November 1933, known as the Ley de Nacionalización del Trabajo or "50 percent law", reserved at least half of all jobs for Cubans. Naturalization became a way to keep a job. In a message printed in the bulletin at the end of 1936, President Miguel Mariano Gómez reported more than 35,000 applications for citizenship and 1,312 certificates issued in a few months. The 1937 to 1939 lists, the longest in this collection, reflect that rush.
Years covered
The lists run from April 1904 to 1930 and from July 1937 to 1939. The bulletin continued between 1931 and 1937, but in much shorter issues, and lists for those years have not been found in it, apart from a short list for April 1930 in the May 1930 issue.
Going further
A printed entry is the end of a longer process. The Registro Civil of the town where the person lived recorded the declaration of intention and the final citizenship entry, and these can name parents, a spouse, children and earlier residences. The Secretaría de Estado's own files are held in the Archivo Nacional de Cuba. When asking for these records, give the person's name as printed, their birthplace, and the year and month of the list.
Acknowledgements
Abel Torres of the "Genealogía de Santiago de Cuba, Holguin, Guantanamo, Las Tunas y Granma" Facebook group compiled these lists from the bulletin and shared them with the group as PDFs.
Volunteers who transcribed the first names from the PDFs into the database: Evelin M., Mayra G., Eva B. & Lourdes D., Yulio D.
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